On Latin America

It should go without saying that Latin America is a big and diverse place, and that lumping all "Latin" people together is akin to lumping all European countries together... unless you're doing it for geographical reasons, it makes little sense.

First of all, why is it called "Latin" America? The most common language in the region is, of course, Spanish. However, there's the 'small' exception of Brazil, the largest and most populated country in Latin America, where they speak Portuguese. Both Spanish and Portuguese are Romance languages derived from Latin. Other less accepted names include "Hispanic" America and "Ibero-America".

And just how big and diverse is Latin America (LA)?

In terms of size, LA is 8.1mm square miles, roughly 2.2 times the size of the United States (including Alaska and Hawaii). It is home to more than 560mm people in more than 20 independent countries and in 8 dependent territories. Even today, there are more than 200 languages and dialects in active use, including Spanish, Portuguese, English, French and Dutch among many others.

Through its history, LA has known almost every single form of government known to mankind, from tributary empires (like the Aztecs), monarchies (like the Incas), "plain" empires (like in Mexico with Iturbide or Maximillian), to communism (like Cuba) or military dictatorships (like pretty much every single country in LA at one point or another). Today, most countries in Latin America (with very conspicous exceptions) are democracies with widely varying levels of development.

If you're a professional marketer in any given country in Latin America, you will have segmentation studies, socio-economic data, and all sorts of tools to try to segment your consumers into manageable groups... if this is true for any given country in such a large region, why is it that more often than not it is NOT true for the US Spanish speaking population?

Just a question...